Rio 2016; Round up of Day 12 action

Jamaican’s dominance on the tracks continued on Day 12 with Omar McLeod clinching his country’s first ever gold medal in the Olympic Games men’s 110m hurdles. The 22-year-old Jamaican was comfortably ahead after the last hurdle and finished in 13.05 seconds, ahead of Spain’s Orlando Ortega and France’s Dimitri Bascou, who clocked 13.17 and 13.24 respectively.

This was after Usain Bolt ran the fastest time across three semi-finals of the 20o meters in 19.78 and Elaine Thompson winning the 200 meters Women’s race.

There was also US success in the women’s long jump, when two-time world champion Tianna Bartoletta finally won Olympic gold, with a life-time best 7.17m.

In Basketball, the semi-finalists of the Men’s Basket Ball event were revealed, after Wednesday’s quarter-finals in which Australia moved closer to its first Olympic medal by comfortably beating long-time nemesis Lithuania, 90-64. They will play Serbia, who had a narrow 86-83 win over Croatia.

Spain who have picked themselves up after two early losses beat France 92-67.

In the last four, the Spaniards will face USA, who let Argentina take an early lead before asserting their superiority for a 105-78 win.

The Germans were at it again on Wednesday, after knocking out the Nigeria’s men’s team in Football, this time upsetting their Brazilian hosts in beach volleyball. The game followed a bronze medal match in which Americans Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross beat Brazil’s other women’s team, Larissa and Talita.

Finally, China reinforced its dominance of table tennis by repeating in Rio what it did at London 2012, sweeping gold across the singles and the team competitions. The Chinese men’s team, led by Ma Long, who had already won the men’s singles, defeated Japan in the final. China had already won the women’s team title, and Ding Ning won the women’s singles gold.